Ianto Jones' Diary
by CafeAime
Summary: The diary of Ianto Jones during the year that never was.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Caroline;; without you, this wouldn't be worth even a second glance. Thank you.**

**Ally;; without YOU, this wouldn't even be here. Thank YOU. And also, thank you for the geekiest, lovliest weekend :D xxx**

**-x-**

After Canary Wharf, there was a… transition. The transition to insanity, I suppose. Torchwood One to Torchwood Three. Lisa's camp-under-the-stars-impulsive Ianto to your make-the-coffee-keep-his-mouth-shut Ianto. During that transition, I did a lot of waiting. And thinking. And I wondered… so many things. If Lisa would ever be human again… If _I_ could ever be human again.

Technically, during that transition they were supposed to have assigned us all psychologists. I knew because I filed that policy myself. And I thought… how paranoid the higher powers must be if they've got a policy for that. _Alien invasion_. What crap. The closest I'd come to aliens at that point was… well, I hadn't. I was just a junior researcher, and the aliens were just stories. That's why I'd laughed, when I read that. Aliens. My arse.

But then Canary Wharf came and went and the transition began and I remembered how I'd laughed. So easy, it was, to laugh at those little green many-legged things that lurk in the background of bad sci-fi films and children's nightmares. How stupid I'd been. No… not stupid. Clueless.

Clueless, and in desperate need of ears to whisper into that weren't powered by oil or technology that I didn't even try to understand. And that's when I remembered that policy. All survivors were legally entitled to a complimentary psychologist by the power of Yvonne, or one of the other higher-ups.

But the higher-ups were all gone, and no one else would willfully spare those ears that I craved so much.

So I took my severance package from Torchwood One – less 'severance' and more 'keep-quiet', it seemed – and took myself over to Dr Murphy Sampson.

She listened.

Oh, _god_. How wonderful that was… to have someone to listen that doesn't try to interrupt. I told her everything. Like a waterfall of passion and pain and dead batteries pouring out of my mouth all at once, and still she listened. All about Torchwood and the cybermen but I kept the key bits quiet because even seemingly friendly ears might turn on you.

She told me that when I couldn't find a pair of ears that would listen, I should make my own. I said, how? She gave me a little black book with hundreds and hundreds of blank pages. A gift, she said. To write in when there were no ears to listen or eyes that could see what she saw. Told me that every time I wrote in it, I'd be able to picture those ears and feel that everything was going to be ok, someday.

I have to admit it. I was skeptical. Left after our first session with that book and an apology – I'm sorry, I don't think this is going to work out.

She smiled and let me go with knowing eyes.

I still see those ears, every time I write in this little black book of mine…

I started writing when Lisa died. I stopped after the first time we spent the night together. I started again when you left. Ran away like a child after a shiny new toy because I was old and boring.

She told me a lot of things, Dr Sampson – a lot of things that made me think 'oh god, she's insane' at the time but inspired me to write a thousand sonnets for her every day just to say thank you.

One thing that she told me was to end every day with a question. Something I wondered. Something _I wanted to know. _This little black book was for being selfish, she said. For writing what I _want_, not what I _need. _

But I wonder so many things.

So I'll just leave it at this.

I wonder…


	2. Fairy Tale

I don't pretend. I never could. When all the other kids went off to play in their little make believe worlds, I watched. From a distance. I tried, once or twice. So, so hard. They laughed at me. So bad at seeing what wasn't there. Too good at seeing what was.

Like the way you looked at her.

You looked at her like… like you couldn't believe what you were seeing. Like a story. She's good at pretending, isn't she? So good. Invited you to play in her little fairy tale so she could be the Princess and you could be the Prince and she kisses you and you wake up and it's so absurdly simple for _happily ever after _to follow that sentence that you can't help but run after her. If only to play in her tiny, insignificant fantasy for a few seconds before the real world invades.

She used to look at me like I was the wicked witch, when you kissed me. Like I was the one who burnt down the sets and tore all the ballgowns just to make you look at me. I've never been like that, you know that. She didn't. So wrapped up in her fairy tale like it was the only thing that mattered in the whole world. She couldn't see past the curtain to realise it's just a game you like to play and that the audience is laughing.

And then you left.

She kept saying – she said, 'why would he leave? Why would he leave me?' Me. That's what she said. 'Me.' The only person that mattered, I suppose, in her little fairy tale. None of us questioned it, though. Let her have her stories, I thought. Come to think of it, they all have stories. Little fantasies. That you'd come back again. They drifted in and out of their little stories so often they couldn't tell fact from fiction and they looked… so _happy._

I've never been good at pretending. I couldn't kid myself that you were coming back.

Couldn't make myself believe that the fairy tale existed.

Couldn't even tell myself that if you did ever come back, it would be for me.

So obvious. You and Gwen… everyone saw it. Her ignorance might have redeemed her but she saw it most of all. Made me want to scream. She's stupid, I wanted to say. Stupid. You're all _stupid._

And that's what I went on thinking, until last night. It was a fairly average one – archive the crap that falls through the rift, clean up their shit and move on. I was on a cleaning spree – washing away everything you'd ever touched, just because I could. Like you were never there. Tried to convince myself that you were a figment of all our imaginations, that you were gone now. No more confusion, no more mixed signals or secrets or… or…

And then I heard it. So stifled I could barely hear it, but I did. I reckon it's all that sneaking around when I first joined up – turned me into some sort of… spy. I used to like that – like James Bond. Seeing what's really there, hearing all the clues and adding them up one by one. But most of the time I wish I didn't know what lay behind those closed doors.

But this time, I'm sort of glad I did.

Anyway, I heard the crying – sort of muffled, like crying into a pillow like mam used to do when dad left. It was coming from your office. I dropped the bucket of lukewarm water and that stupid little yellow sponge and ran. Forgot all about clearing you away. I ran, because I thought you'd come back for us. For me.

You hadn't.

Gwen says she does that most nights – before she goes home, when everyone else is gone and I'm… doing whatever it is I have to do that night, whether it's wipe up alien guts or clear away coffee cups – she sneaks into your office and just… sits there. Sits there and smells you on the desk, on the chair, on the shirts you left lying around just to make me come up and berate you.

I told her that I do it, too.

I told her a lot. Too much, I thought then… but it's like the weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders. She told me, too. Told me she loved you. I said I did, too. Had a good long laugh about the irony and then the tears started coming and couldn't stop so we went to your bed – underneath the hub that was your home and that you never left until now – and lay there in each other's arms, crying and laughing and talking. When Rhys rang, we let it ring.

She loves him too, you know. Just like I loved Lisa. And yet it's easier for me to say her name than yours and I don't think I want to wonder why.

I've never been much of a talker, you know that. But if what it takes for me to finally pretend that I don't love you is to say it – shout it with pen and blood red ink – then I will. Because you're not coming back. Gwen knows it, I know it, but she refuses to see it. Can't, I sometimes think. None of them can.

Actually… I wonder sometimes if they can. If they know, deep down, you've gone for good. If they can tell we're just a blip for you – like an ant on the pavement. So easily squashed and forgotten by that big, laughing bully. Is that you? The bully? Or are you the weedy kid who tells him not to and gets a bloody nose for his trouble?

If they can see it – what I see – they pretend not to. They're good at Pretending.

So I sit back and watch them play and try to stop from screaming as I let them carry on their pointless fairy tale. And then I clear out their shit and archive the crap and cry on your bed with Gwen when the truth decides to stretch its painfully long legs in our hearts.

I wonder…


End file.
